I haven’t written a blog for a while… since August! It’s time to get back on track! Earlier I wrote a blog entitled “Mixcraft is Amazing!” and yes, it is a fantastic little program. As I’ve been teaching, however, there are some issues I’ve come across that I would love to see improved. For instance, Mixcraft does not allow for video integration. Garageband does that! Additionally, it is very difficult to mix down in Mixcraft. You can’t automate effects (record changes in real time), you can’t really zoom into an audio clip as much as is really needed for some of the cuts, and the normalize function is pretty aweful. I have to take any project that needs a lot of gain boost into Sonar to really be able to mix it down. Also, you can’t send certain tracks to an effect bus. ie: there’s no way to add eq to the entire mix of drums. It would also be nice to have a master send so that I could add an effect to the entire mix of the song – ie, reverb. Otherwise you have to add that particular setting to each track individually which is not efficient. edit: See comment below – you can add master effects to Mixcraft.

We’ve had a hard time playing the keyboard into mixcraft. Our lab has Soundblaster Live! 24 bit external sound cards. This is not ideal, but it’s what we’re stuck with. For some reason, when we send the output of the MIDI track (Virtual Instrument) to the soft synth that comes with the sound card (Creative USB Sound Font Synth), we can no longer hear the keyboard. We have to get around it by using Acoustica instruments and setting the latency to it’s lower setting. Even with the lowest setting, there is still some delay, and the sound quality has a lot of pops, clicks, and sometimes doesn’t even work. Students who are adept at piano have to record into the computer using Sonar or Sibelius.

HOWEVER, I will note that for its price, Mixcraft is still amazing! I think Mixcraft is great for beginners who want to mix loops and grooves together to make their own songs and beats. For my class, however, we need something with a little more power.  Maybe Acoustica could make a higher level version for a little more money. The interface is so much easier to use than Sonar, I would be willing to pay a little extra money for the features listed above!